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As the massively underplayed, almost invisible 150th anniversary celebrations of 1857 wind down, one may well wonder why a movement that gave India’s erstwhile colonial masters their biggest scare ever, defined almost all their following policies, had such a long memory in oral history been so downplayed? Irrespective of the search for nomenclature defining its nature — mutiny/ revolt/ uprising/ petty bourgeois/ jacquerie — similar movements in other nations have had state-driven, passionate searches to unearth the smallest detail. What was its exact extent — geographically and in its scope? What were its socio-economic underpinnings? Who participated, who reaped the benefits by siding with the British? How many people died in the events of 1857? Why have we as a nation so bought into the British opinion that it was a mutiny? Fortunately most recent studies have debunked that it was just a soldiers’ revolt, but the knowledge has largely been confined…

HISTORY: What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British"

Aug. 24, 2007 (LPAC) One of the tragedies of English-speaking British colonies is that their history under the British rule was written by the British historians, or by those natives who were trained by the British historians. However, it seems the time has come to record history in its true light-- at least so in India.Amaresh Misra, writing about India's first war of independence in 1857, in his recently published book, In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, said that there was an "untold holocaust" that caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years, beginning in 1857. British-fed historians, claims Misra, have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order."It was a holocaust, one where millions disappeared. It was a …

Ahmedabad, January 7 When the country was up in arms against the British in the First War of Independence in 1857, Gujarat, then the land of many princely states, was the only place in the country where a true-blue anti-colonial, anti-feudal peoples movement powered by an alliance of Kolis, Bhils, and Muslims, with helping hands from Khastriyas and Patels, was taking shape.“Driven by the British polices and the angst of the peasantry with the rulers, it was perhaps the earliest example of social engineering in modern India. It was against the British rule and also against the local rulers and is the one aspect that has largely been ignored in the accounts of 1857. It was an historical alliance that predated the Congress’ much-touted KHAM alliance of the 1980s by more than a century and the real Gujarati Gaurav,” says Amaresh Misra, author of the just-released “War of C…